Boarding Action
by Arc Trader
Summary: While at Eden Prime on the way to Earth for Shepard's trial, Cerberus commandos move to scuttle the Normandy and ensure that the Alliance will not be able to study the ship. Deck 4's crew is not about to let that happen. M for violence, profanity.


Prompt: _I have seen many stories depicting Tali as a weak little girl, however people often forget that not only is she a good enough warrior for Shepard, a Specter, to take her out of missions, but also that she had the finest military training the migrant fleet could offer._

_I would like to see a fic where one of the crew (preferably one of the tougher ones) picks a fight with her, and she proceeds to kick their ass in such a manner that it would make Beowulf jealous._

_The gathered crew should be in absolute shock and awe at how effective she is at hand to hand._

_Bonus points if Shepard (male, love interest) and Garrus (best friend) give her a thorough "Oh my god that was awesome!" speech in private._

Originally written 8/19/2011. Any Mass Effect 3 spoilers are unintentional; this story was written nearly 3 months before the script was leaked.

A reference for the voices of the Cerberus soldiers in this story can be found here: youtube . com/watch?v=qX73XG9e5BE

* * *

><p><em>To<em>:_ Centurion Zulu 5_

_From: Cerberus Command_

_Systems Alliance has recalled Normandy SR-2 (CO:CMDR John Shepard) to Earth for trial regarding destruction of Bahak System. Normandy SR-2 currently en route to Exodus Cluster, Eden Prime, for refueling and resupply before making final jump to Local Cluster. Vessel must not be captured and analyzed by Alliance science teams._

_**Mission Objectives**_

_Primary_

_1. TOP PRIORITY: Destruction of Normandy SR-2. Analysis: best achieved by overloading power core. Warning: Enhanced Defense Intelligence must be deactivated before this can be done._

_Secondary_

_1. Recovery or destruction of experimental vehicle "M-44 Hammerhead."_

_Tertiary_

_1. If encountered, elimination of Commander Shepard and former Operatives Lawson and Taylor_

_**Primary Opposition**__ (analysis by Operative Meng Lin)_

_Following the conclusion of the Omega-4 mission and the destruction of Bahak, it is believed Shepard's ground team has been reduced substantially. Former STG operative Solus and Justicar Samara have returned to salarian and asari space respectively. Thane Krios has left for the Citadel. The geth platform known as Legion is inoperative: a massive data burst recently detected most likely indicates its runtimes have rejoined the geth collective and it is now an empty shell._

_Cerberus intelligence has managed to lure away Kasumi Goto and Zaeed Massani with false contracts. A Cerberus agent posing as an antiques buyer will deal with Goto, while a Cerberus agent claiming knowledge of Vido Santiago's whereabouts will deal with Massani in a similar fashion._

_We believe Shepard will likely take Taylor and possibly Lawson along to negotiate resupply contracts with the Alliance garrison on Eden Prime. Cerberus has manipulated Alliance officer placement to ensure that Taylor's former commanding officer Colonel Hashim Banks will be in the area. The latest intelligence reports indicate that Banks was greatly displeased with Taylor's resignation from the Alliance. Banks will be likely to hold up the refueling process, if only to spite Taylor._

_As your most likely entry point to the Normandy SR-2 will be through the cargo bay, your opposition will be primarily the occupants of Deck 4. The greatest threats will be the krogan supersoldier "Grunt" and the biotic "Subject Zero" a.k.a. "Jack." Former C-Sec officer/Spectre candidate Garrus Vakarian (alias: Archangel) may possibly be on board as a serious threat on Deck 3, along with negligible Normandy personnel._

_Deck 4's Engineering staff, the quarian Tali'Zorah and her two subordinates, are medium and low-priority threats, respectively._

_An equipment drop will be prepared for you at Safehouse 3B in the capital city of Constant. Top-level Alliance access codes will be provided to you to enter their base without harassment._

_**Secondary Opposition**_

_Alliance military presence on Eden Prime significant. Risk of detection high. STRONGLY RECOMMEND COMPLETION OF MISSION IN TIMELY FASHION._

* * *

><p>Zulu 5 and his four teammates looked out the window of the Kodiak as they approached the frigate in question, currently in drydock at a small Alliance refueling station. He had spent hours monitoring communications until verifying that Shepard and the former Operatives had left the Normandy, precisely to negotiate refueling with the Alliance brass. Even better, Vakarian had also left with them.<p>

They had sprung into action as soon as the Spectre had left. And now they were en route to the Normandy's hangar bay, which was still open thanks to Shepard insisting that it was going to be a short trip and there was no need to close it. A mistake.

Zulu 5 signaled the engineer on the team, a woman designated as Alfa 3. She nodded and tapped the com array on the Kodiak. "Reaper virus away." A modified version of the virus in the IFF, the Illusive Man had specifically had the virus coded to paralyze the Enhanced Defense Intelligence, EDI, in charge of the Normandy for a short time... long enough for Zulu 5 and his team to complete their mission. The Kodiak flew into the bay.

"Mission timer started," said Zulu 5 as his omni-tool timer began. "Ten minutes until EDI is back online. Another fifteen before Alliance security responds. Go." His team nodded and stepped into the Normandy.

* * *

><p>Tali felt a strange sense of emptiness as she stepped out of Zaeed's old room. The gruff mercenary had mysteriously disappeared a few days ago, saying only a few sentences to Shepard. She'd grown rather fond of the old human after one day bumping into him in the hallway and noticing the dirty old rifle he was lugging around. After offering to do some maintenance on it, he'd dropped by her station every once in a while to regale her with stories of his checkered career, something she'd privately begun thinking of as "story time." It was reminiscent of her youth on the Flotilla when the elders of the <em>Rayya<em> would entertain the children with tales of quarian heroism in ages past, a time when they had their homeworld.

Having done all she could for old Jessie today (just a few more repairs and the rifle might actually fire again!) she was heading back to her station when she heard the 'thunk' of a landing and looked in the cargo bay. A Kodiak had just landed. She paused; Shepard hadn't left that long ago, had he? And why hadn't EDI bothered to announce a Kodiak landing?

She was about to bring up the AI's interface when she noticed the shuttle door open and the figures stepping out... humans in white armor and helmets holding all manner of weapons. She barely had time to gasp as she recalled the reports from the flotilla on the _Idenna_. Cerberus commandos.

One of the commandos, a woman by the shape of it, leaned close to EDI's interface and brought up an omni-tool. Almost immediately, the lights flickered and died. Tali turned around. Emergency lights were on. The elevator wasn't working.

She rushed through the door to her station and nearly ran down a surprised Gabby and Ken. "We're under attack. Cerberus troops just got into the cargo bay. Get to Zaeed's room and stay there. Find some weapons he left behind and don't leave." They remained shock still, probably debating on whether to protest or go. Tali waved her arm angrily. "Do as I said! Now!"

They rushed off. Tali reached behind and pulled her shotgun. Two years' worth of adventures and danger with John Shepard had taught her to keep her weapons close by at all times. She stepped into the antechamber between the hall and the engine room and yelled down the stairs. "Jack! Cerberus soldiers are attacking the Normandy! Get up here!"

After a bellowing "What the flaming _FUCK?_" the tattooed woman almost instantly bounded up the stairs, pistol in hand and pulsing with biotic energy. "Where are those fuckers?"

"In the cargo bay. They have an engineer trying to disable the ship's systems. The elevators and com are already down." The two women rushed into the hall and nearly crashed into Grunt.

"I sensed something wrong when the lights went out."

"It's Cerberus," growled Jack.

The krogan barely had time to speak when a storm of gunfire shattered the windows along the hall of Deck 4.

* * *

><p>"Targets sighted. Suppressing fire. Keep the Engineering crew pinned. Fan out and form perimeter. Alfa 3, deploy drone."<p>

The female engineer nodded briskly and did as ordered.

* * *

><p>"Damn it!" growled Tali as she peeked around the corner and fired a shot at the Cerberus squad. Jack moved beside her and let loose a series of biotic blasts that rippled down and into the cargo bay. Unfortunately with the commandos having spread out, it failed to do much more than make a single man stumble.<p>

"Jack, that's great against Husks, but we're dealing with trained soldiers here. Try something else!"

"Since when the fuck were you in charge? Let me guess, when you started riding the Commander's dick?"

Tali ground her teeth at that. She'd picked up that Miranda had been slightly annoyed with her relationship with Shepard, but she seemed to have let it go quickly enough. On the other hand, she'd had no idea that Jack had been harboring similar thoughts.

"No Jack, I'm telling you this because I have some command experience and I want us to put our skills to best use against Cerberus!"

Before the other woman could respond, a glowing red orb suddenly flew through the shattered windows and charged up an electrical shock. The orb vaporized as a concussive blast blew it to pieces. Grunt cycled a shot on his heavy shotgun before snarling irritably, "Less talking. More killing!" The supersoldier bellowed a roar of defiance and rushed into the middle of the hallway, blasting away with his Claymore.

* * *

><p>"Krogan in sight. Alfa 3, prepare to boost up to upper deck on my mark." Zulu 5 flipped up the sights aligned with the underslung grenade launcher and pumped a round into it. Shifting his aim to the left of the enemy trio, he pulled the trigger four times.<p>

"Mark."

* * *

><p>The soft <em>thunk thunk<em> of small projectiles landing on the floor immediately drew Tali's attention. With the thunderous report of gunfire going on, she had only heard it thanks to her helmet's audio amplifiers, which had been calibrated to combat settings to prevent her blowing out her internal auditory organs from the shooting. At the same time, however, they would pick up noises that were below 50 decibels to ensure, for example, the footsteps an enemy soldier sneaking up on her could be heard.

"Grenades!" she yelled.

Jack swore and brought up a biotic barrier to protect them against the coming barrage of fire and shrapnel. However, her efforts were for naught as the grenades began to hiss instead of boom. A thick gray cloud erupted around them as the smoke grenades released their payload.

"I can't smell anything!" roared Grunt.

Tali brought up her omni-tool and cycled through her visor's settings to thermal. Almost immediately after that, a roar of engines echoed through the entire deck and a pair of heavy booted feet landed on the hallway.

She reacted without thinking. Springing to her feet, Tali leapt and tackled the Cerberus commando. Getting a glimpse of her enemy, Tali noted with mild surprise it was a woman.

The enemy commando kicked out from under her and forced Tali off. The quarian stumbled against the non-operative elevator as the commando slammed a fist into her stomach. She let out a _whoof_ of air and collapsed.

The commando, satisfied that Tali had been dealt with, turned to enter the engine room. Almost instantly, the commando's head was caught in an armlock. Not expecting the quarian to recover so quickly, the woman's eyes widened in horror as she felt the quarian wrestling with her neck seal.

* * *

><p>Zulu 5 ducked behind cover as another shotgun blast narrowly missed him. The smoke was impairing the biotic, Jack, but apparently the krogan supersoldier was not handicapped as heavily by it. A double-beep brought his attention to the corner of his HUD.<p>

"Alfa 3 is down. Repeat, Alfa 3 is down. Distraction plan has failed." As the only member of their team who had the experimental rocket boots that R&D had recently developed, the mission was going to be a lot harder. How the hell had Alfa 3 fallen anyway? He and his team had been keeping the biotic and the krogan suppressed, and the engineering staff certainly didn't have the combat capabilities to deal with a trained commando.

"Bravo 1 and 2, take up position in front of the hovertank and continue suppressing fire. Sierra 7, get into the hovertank and power it up."

* * *

><p>Tali clambered back to Jack and Grunt, dropping into a crouch by them as Grunt continued to blast away at the enemies. "What the fuck, girl?" snapped Jack. "Where'd you go?"<p>

Tali held up her knife, still dripping with the blood of the Cerberus commando when she'd stabbed her in the neck. "Somebody was trying to sabotage the engines. She's dead."

She holstered the blade and drew her plasma shotgun, idly noting that her pistol must have fallen somewhere during the struggle with the Cerberus saboteur. "We can't win against them with just shotguns from here. Everyone jump down to the cargo deck when there's a break in their firing."

She raised her omni-tool and fired off a micro-dart. The mass effect fields around the dart materialized into a familiar blue orb. "Go for the optics, Chiktikka, go for the optics!"

The drone moved toward a pair of commandos who had taken cover behind an engine regulator and delivered a powerful electric shock. One of the men screamed in pain and a pair of assault rifles tore the drone apart. But the few seconds it had distracted them allowed the quarian, the biotic, and the krogan to drop down to the cargo level unimpeded.

The trio sprang into action. A heavy concussive blast tore apart the regulator the two commandos were taking cover behind. Grunt, blood rage taking over, roared and charged at the pair of commandos.

Meanwhile, Jack became a blur of blue and white as a biotic charge propelled her instantaneously across the room toward the lone commando on the other side of the room. However, the man's kinetic barriers withstood the force of the charge and he was merely rocked back on his heels rather than flipped end over end as so many others of Jack's victims.

Tali idly noted that this man looked different than the others; his armor was bulkier and he had what looked like a radio transmitter backpack. Most likely the commander of the group.

Something gnawed at her as she activated Admiral Gerrel's ShieldJack program on the leader. She had seen five commandos. Where was the last one?

* * *

><p>Zulu 5 noted that his shields were suddenly being drained by a malware program as they flickered and died. The quarian was glaring at him, her omni-tool abuzz with activity as her fingers typed rapidly into it. His internal com was abuzz with reports from his teammates.<p>

_"We can't stop him! Oh shit, oh shit!"_

_"I've got a man down!"_

_"This is Sierra 7. What's your status? WHAT'S YOUR STATUS?"_

On the other side, Bravo 1 was a pile of torn apart guts as the krogan had run right over him and savagely beaten him to death with his bare hands, and Bravo 2 was not faring much better.

The enemy biotic threw a field of dark energy at him meant to knock him off his feet, but his armor took the hit and he maintained his balance without much effort. The biotic prepared a stronger biotic attack, but just as she threw the warp, he brought his assault rifle up. The gun took the hit, becoming a melted piece of metal but allowing him enough time to close the gap between them.

"Die, motherfucker." Zulu 5 balled a fist.

An armored gauntlet struck the woman in the midsection; he felt several ribs crack. He threw a punch at her face but she had just enough strength to turn her head and let it graze her shoulder.

Zulu 5 grunted as a burst of plasma struck him across the chest. The quarian had unfolded what looked like a geth shotgun and hit him with an overcharged shot. Deciding the biotic could wait, he threw her hard against a wall. The human sagged unconscious as Zulu 5 rushed at the quarian.

Both of them suddenly struggled to keep their balance as a rush of air began circulating throughout the room. Zulu 5 looked to his left and grinned. Although Bravo 2 was now as dead as Bravo 1, Sierra 7 had finally gotten the Hammerhead back online.

* * *

><p>Tali gasped in horror as the hovertank roared to life as it detached from the holding clamps on the ceiling and engaged its thrusters. The turret began to spit out micro-missiles around the hangar. A half-dozen detonated around Grunt; the shockwaves and shrapnel threw the krogan down and rendered him out and unconscious.<p>

The Cerberus commander she'd been fighting had ducked behind some debris and was yelling into his communicator. The Hammerhead was already swiveling around to face her.

* * *

><p>"<em>Negative<em> on targeting the engine core!"

_"Requesting clarification, sir. Primary mission objective will be accomplished if engine core is destroyed."_

"Primary objective will not be met. Engine core safeties must be manually disabled and power surge implemented to ensure complete destruction of Normandy SR-2. Negative on targeting the engine. Eliminate the quarian first. Acknowledge this order, Sierra 7."

_"Acknowledged, sir."_

* * *

><p>Grunt had had no idea how the Hammerhead worked. The krogan was far too big to fit into the slim hovertank and was not familiar with its functions. Which was certainly one reason why he was lying unconscious from all the missiles exploding around him. Tali, on the other hand, had accompanied Shepard to recover the vehicle from Zeona as well as investigate the Project Overlord incident, and was well-versed in its capabilities.<p>

That included knowing the turret's inability to rotate horizontally, its homing missiles, its redundant microboosters in case of main thruster failure... and its paper-thin armor and weak kinetic barriers.

She chanced a glance at the Cerberus commander. With his Mattock having been reduced to scrap by Jack's biotics, he appeared to be simply waiting for the driver in the Hammerhead to finish her off.

Fortunately, the Hammerhead really did not have much room to maneuver in the hangar bay. The most it could do was rotate and fire its cannon, which was one point in her favor.

"One more time, girl," she whispered as she sent out Chiktikka vas Paus again.

The Cerberus driver locked onto the combat drone in lieu of any other targets and fired a missile. Tali poked out of her cover and brought up her omni-tool, sending a viral program that would crash the auto-targeting ability of the Hammerhead. The firewalls protecting the tank were easy enough to bypass; after all, she had been the one who had written the cyberwarfare suite after encountering hostile geth in the Hammerhead while looking for Prothean artifacts with Shepard and Zaeed.

By some miracle, the first missile fired at Chiktikka overshot and missed, exploding against a power regulator. The subsequent missiles fired didn't even lock on thanks to her program; they sailed off like dumb-fired rockets.

Tali slid to Grunt's unconscious form and grabbed his Claymore. It still had a heavy concussive shot in it. Perfect.

Chiktikka vas Paus floated up to the Hammerhead and delivered an electrical shock to the driver's window. This close in, the Hammerhead's cannon couldn't even hit it, a critical weakness she'd mentioned to Shepard about the hovertank: it was absolutely point defenseless.

"Sorry, girl," she murmured as she sent the drone an override command. Chiktikka exploded, sending a pulse of energy out. The armored window was spiderwebbed with cracks. She hefted the Claymore and fired the concussive shot.

Tali cried out in agony as the recoil from the shotgun hit her and actually knocked her back a few feet. She fell to her knees, gripping her right shoulder, trying to fight the pain: it felt like someone had tried to wrench her arm off. As it was, her shoulder was probably going to be very sore for the next few weeks. But the results were as she hoped: the shot had blown open a hole in the cockpit. The Hammerhead crashed to the ground as the computers maintaining the thrusters had exploded. The Cerberus pilot was still. Though no injuries were visible, Tali had known enough quarians who had died to know that the pressure wave from the explosion had rattled the man inside the suit so much that his internal organs had liquified.

She slowly pulled herself to her feet and looked around. She had dropped her plasma shotgun a few meters away after firing Grunt's claymore. Something was wrong...

A wave of pain surged through her as the Cerberus commander suddenly body checked her across the floor. The engineer let out a yelp of pain as she landed and slid several meters on her bruised arm and struggled to stay conscious. Looking up, she saw him pick up one of the other Cerberus soldier's rifles and move to replace the heat sink.

With only seconds to react, she brought her omni-tool up. A few taps of her fingers and an overload mine ejected out of her tool's micro-processor, impacting right on the rifle. The heat sink the commander had just slapped in was instantly rendered useless as the computer on the rifle read it as overheated.

As the commander moved to yet again slap in a new heat sink, Tali clambered to her feet and drew her knife with her good arm, her left hand. Considering the way her right arm was still sending shooting pains up her side, there was no way she'd be able to fire anything bigger than a pistol. She knelt low to the ground and dashed forward, her doubly curved legs allowing her to rush much faster than most other known bipedal species. The Cerberus commander dropped his heat sink and swung the rifle's butt to fend away the quarian, but she deftly maneuvered out of the way and dug her knife into the man's right knee, where the armor was thinner.

The commander grunted in pain and collapsed, trying to support his weight on his good leg. The man was extremely heavily armored, but 25 years of living in an envirosuit had left Tali'Zorah vas Normandy with intimate knowledge of exactly how almost any armored suit was designed and where they were weakest. Twisting her knife for good measure as she pulled it out of his knee, she moved to jab it again into his left armpit where there was a thinner plate of armor. The laser-sharpened blade easily punched through and sunk in until it hit bone. The commander howled in pain as Tali tried to pull the knife out, but she was a split second too slow to avoid a right hook from the man that rattled her helmet. Tali went reeling from the blow, though the deathgrip she had ensured she still held onto her knife as she pulled back from him. She saw the man rapidly crawling towards the heat sink he'd dropped. Blood was pouring out of his injury; the stab must have nicked an artery in his armpit.

She had to finish this quickly. Even that joint wound was nowhere near fast enough to kill him. As he slapped the falsely overheated sink out of his rifle, Tali took advantage of the fact that his hands were distracted and moved to drive her knife into the neck seal.

Faster than she could have expected, the commander whirled around and grabbed her knife hand with his good arm. His grip was like a steel clamp resisting her: the knife was mere centimeters away from his neck. Quarian muscles were much denser and stronger than human muscles to the point where they could rival krogan in an arm wrestling match, but the armor suit the Cerberus soldier was wearing must have had an amplifier that increased the wearer's strength to incredible levels.

Old memories flared to life in her head. The old Migrant Fleet Marine instructors on the _Rayya_ had drilled her most extensively in hand-to-hand combat. Quarians being as poor as they were, were more likely than most to be the ones without a weapon when most in need.

So instead of continuing the struggle, she let her arm go slack and let the Cerberus soldier push her knife back towards her.

Not expecting this, the commander tipped forward and overbalanced himself. His grip on her wrist slackened for an instant. Ignoring the burning pain in her right shoulder, Tali brought her hand down in a chop across the Cerberus agent's wrist, forcing him to let go of her hand. With both her hands free, she wrenched his head forward and slammed the knife down into the back of his neck.

Gasping from exertion, Tali slid off of the dead man and looked around. The assault rifle he'd never managed to replace the heat sink for was lying next to him. Grunt was still unconscious from the explosions around him, but Tali wasn't worried about the krogan; he'd be fine. Holding her shoulder, she stumbled towards Jack.

The human biotic was stirring slightly by the time Tali got to her side. "Jack, Jack, wake up," she said as she gently shook her.

"Oh, fuck," groaned the ex-con as she slowly revived. "Where's that son of a bitch who punched me?"

"Dead," said Tali flatly.

"Holy shit," hissed Jack as she took in the scene and the pool of blood around him, as well as the knife sticking out of his neck. "You did that?"

The quarian nodded.

* * *

><p>Zulu 5 was not an average human. For that matter, no Cerberus Centurion could be called average. Every Centurion received extensive cybernetic and genetic upgrades, courtesy of a certain Commander Shepard's Lazarus Project data.<p>

Zulu 5's red blood cells and nanomachines were already working to seal the punctured axillary artery in his armpit. Tali'Zorah's final strike on his spine had by sheer luck missed the critical disks of the vertebrae and neck. But even for a transhuman such as he, months of recuperation would be necessary to fully recover.

He didn't have months. He had mere seconds before slipping unconscious.

He had vastly underestimated the quarian. Analyst Lin had been mistaken in labeling her as a "medium-level threat." He shoved the pain aside and reached back, wrenching the knife out of his neck with an all too human reaction.

"FUCK!"

The assault rifle he still held had long since stopped recognizing the false weapon overheat signal the overload mine had implanted in it. He sighted on the quarian and moved to pull the trigger.

There was a sound of shattering glass.

* * *

><p>Another eleven shots rang out in the room.<p>

Tali looked on in shock as the Cerberus agent's head continued to be riddled with bullets. Both his eye slots had been shot clean through.

Jack lowered the smoking Predator pistol in her hand as she drew in a shuddering breath. "Yeah, fuck you too, Cerberus."

Seconds later, a beeping noise came from the commander's omni-tool. A moment after that, the emergency lights shut off as the regular lighting reactivated and a familiar blue orb materialized.

"Enhanced Defense Intelligence back online. Enemy virus purged from system."

* * *

><p>Tali quietly sucked the tube of nutrient paste from her helmet as she sat in the mess hall. The Cerberus attack the previous day had shaken most of the crew. After EDI had reactivated, a general alert had been sent straight to Shepard and the Alliance garrison on Eden Prime. An Alliance forensics team had taken away the Cerberus bodies and their shuttle, while Jacob and Miranda were directing a repair team to fix up the Hammerhead. Aside from herself, the mess hall was empty.<p>

Chakwas had taken a look at Jack and Grunt as well as her arm. Jack had been given some medigel and bandages and told to take it easy while her ribs mended. Grunt had gotten away with a relatively moderate concussion. As for Tali, a bone in her shoulder had actually dislocated from firing Grunt's Claymore. Her arm was wrapped up in a nice sling after being realigned properly and given a dose of medigel. She winced. The realigning had been nearly as bad as the actual dislocating.

Her thoughts were interrupted when a pair of heavy bodies dropped into the seat across from her. She smiled as Shepard and Garrus settled in across from her. Garrus's mandibles flared slightly as he took in the plate of genuine meat from Palaven that was sitting before him. He looked up at her.

"So Tali... Grunt tells me that the state of the hovertank was your doing. Chakwas tells me that's why your arm is in a sling," began Shepard.

She nodded as she sucked the last bit of paste out of her tube. Ejecting it from her feeding port, she replaced it with a second tube.

"You're serious."

She nodded.

The human and turian shared a look of disbelief.

"You know," said Garrus. "When I was in the Palaven military, I asked my sniping instructor once how a lone foot soldier could destroy a tank. He said, 'long-range artillery. Airstrikes are preferable.' You really accomplished it with an omni-tool and man-portable weaponry?"

"Well, it's what I did. What do you want me to say?" she asked irritably. "Besides, it's not like I destroyed a Mako. The Hammerhead has a lot more weaknesses to it."

"But still," said Shepard. "That's quite the feat. Really. I had to wait until Haestrom before I could take down a tank-class enemy on foot."

Her chin dipped low. To Garrus, the gesture meant nothing. Shepard recognized it as her trademark smirk.

"And that commander," continued the turian. "You did quite the number on him with that knife. Since when did you become that proficient with it?"

"You learn a lot, when you listen to enough of Zaeed's stories. And I've also been talking with Kasumi. I've been trying to figure out how her omni-tool makes that blade she uses. She offered to teach me some fighting techniques. And my father made sure I got the best military training the fleet had to offer."

The turian's mandibles again flared, this time in surprise. He looked down at his plate, which he had somehow completely finished eating in the short time. "I... see. Well... I'd better get back to the Main Battery. I'll see you later?"

She nodded. Garrus turned and ambled off.

At that, the elevator door opened and Zaeed and Kasumi stepped into view. They approached the table.

"Are we interrupting anything?" asked Kasumi, grinning.

"Nope. When did you two get back?" asked Shepard.

"Apparently we came back around the same time," said the gruff mercenary. "Bastards didn't have any intel on Vido. There were about fifteen Cerberus agents who jumped me when I walked into the meeting site." He grabbed a prepackaged MRE from the mess's cabinets and returned to the elevator, still grumbling to himself. Even after the elevator doors slid shut, his voice could still be heard. "I was the only one who walked out of there alive."

"I have almost the same story," said the thief as she smoothly slid into the chair beside Tali. "My buyer turned out to be a total fake. He said he wanted the collection of quarian poetry I have. But then he slipped up and said the poet was _nar_ Rannoch. That isn't right at all. You'd have to be _vas_ Rannoch. Isn't that right, Tal-Tal?"

"Yes. And Kasumi, I find it very insensitive that you are trying to hawk priceless pieces of quarian heritage on the open market," she said dryly.

"Yeah, well, that was before I realized just how valuable this is to you. Maybe the Admiralty Board would be more open to my offers?"

"We can discuss that later."

Shepard cleared his throat. "Anyway, what happened to the buyer?"

"He tried to pull an omni-blade on me!" exclaimed Kasumi. "I thought I had the patent on that design! Now everyone's going to have omni-blades sooner or later. Anyway, he clearly had no idea how to use it properly. Don't bring a knife to a knife fight... if you don't know what you're doing."

The thief paused, then said, "You know, it's really hard to believe you had such a hard time jumping Shep here when you were capable of this much mass destruction."

The engineer tilted her head to the side as she squeezed her lover's hand. "Appearances can be quite deceiving."

Kasumi chuckled. "Don't I know that. Well, I'd better be off. I need a drink after today." In a flash, she was gone.

Tali's attention snapped back to Shepard as he moved into the seat Kasumi had vacated . "You know, I was talking to Jack earlier about what happened."

She stared back. After what the biotic had said about her and Shepard... "And?"

"And she said you're one hell of a beast on the field. She said you're pretty good for a quarian. And that I'd better not piss you off."

Tali blinked in surprise. "I... see."

Shepard rubbed his neck awkwardly. "Then she asked if you were that fierce in bed, too."

"What?" she exclaimed, her face growing hot in embarrassment.

"Right...I walked away after that. She seemed pretty damn amused, though."

"Oh," she chirped.

The human grinned and pulled her close. "If I had been inclined to answer her question, I definitely would have said yes."

"Shepard!"


End file.
